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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Bristol strip club ban

84 replies

Aha85 · 06/03/2021 19:13

I'm really hoping this goes ahead. The strip found aren't happy.

www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/strip-club-ban-bristol-would-5079319

This argument from the strip clubs is particularly odd:

"Nil-cap is a LGBTQ+ phobic policy as it discriminates against Queer people who go to these venues." Confused

OP posts:
MissBarbary · 07/03/2021 11:43

How is the power dynamic 'different?'

Goodness- do you really need someone to explain that? It's so basic , entry level, feminism even I understand it and I'm not a feminist.

A person is still paying another to entertain them with sexual titillation

Indeed - bang on the nail - and it's wrong- regardless of who the buyer is.

TheMarzipanDildo · 07/03/2021 11:43

“How is the power dynamic 'different?'”

Men are physically bigger than women. I’m a short woman, and I often feel intimidated around men because I know how easy it would be for them to overpower me (have been assaulted in the past).

TheImber · 07/03/2021 11:47

@MissBarbary

How is the power dynamic 'different?'

Goodness- do you really need someone to explain that? It's so basic , entry level, feminism even I understand it and I'm not a feminist.

A person is still paying another to entertain them with sexual titillation

Indeed - bang on the nail - and it's wrong- regardless of who the buyer is.

🙄

Why is paying for sexual titillation wrong?

thatsmy · 07/03/2021 11:48

I hope the women are ok and that if needed they are allowed sufficient financial support.

MissBarbary · 07/03/2021 11:51

Ironically many ballet dancers go to work in strip clubs after they're ballet career has ended

I don't believe that.

I did find this , very biased article, featuring 3 actual dancers , only one of whom had a limited professional career, who turned to stripping.

www.insider.com/why-dancers-became-strippers-2018-4

I do however like her opinion on the quality of "dancing" in strip clubs.

ThatI can actually dance, as opposed to just walking around and wiggle

While no real dancing is required of performers

CuntAmongstThePigeons · 07/03/2021 11:57

With the greatest respect Barbary, how many dancers who work in strip clubs do you know?

You may not be best placed to judge if you have no experience. I've worked in strip clubs on and off for over a decade. I have many friends who work in reputable and skilled industries who also dance. As I mentioned previously there is a crossover with dancers from other disciplines working in strip clubs, from personal experience ballet is the most common.

Anyway this probably won't get very far as you're unlikely to believe me as its anecdotal and you dont know me from Adam (or eve) and I'm unlikely to have my mind changed as it's my loved experience. However if you ever attend any of the FPFW or SFW events I will buy you a drink and we can discuss some more! (If you wanted to of course)

TheMarzipanDildo · 07/03/2021 11:59

“Why is paying for sexual titillation wrong?”

Because there is, as in many money making industries, far too much scope for exploitation. Do the punters/owners really care about the mental or physical health of the girl who is stripping for them? In this sense it is different from people who strip as a hobby or do burlesque or whatever, although arguable both encourage men to see women as purely there for their pleasure.

Gerla · 07/03/2021 12:02

The 'harm' that strip clubs cause seems to be to the marriages

How condescending.

How selfish that you think the rights of a few women to earn money from a business trumps the rights of everyone in the area who is negatively affected. I guess you would have no problem living next door then?

CuntAmongstThePigeons · 07/03/2021 12:03

But marzipan could you not make the same argument about exploitation for many industries? That's why we have unions and employment laws. Surely strengthening those is better than banning something and forcing it underground?

Gerla · 07/03/2021 12:07

You may not be best placed to judge if you have no experience

Experience of what? Living close to a strip club or in a so-called red light district? I have experience of that. It was hell, not what I want for my kids either. For me the argument you're making is the same as for a polluting factory. Yes, it makes money for a few but it harms far more. You don't get to decide that your experience earning money trumps my experience of earning nothing but still being hassled for living nearby.

CuntAmongstThePigeons · 07/03/2021 12:11

Red light districts are appalling and I have campaigned continuously against Holbeck. That is the only legal one I'm aware of in the UK.

If there is a problem with harassment outside of clubs that needs to be addressed. I've lived above/next to busy bars so I do understand how horrible it can be to have drunk, leering men nearby your home.

alwayslucky · 07/03/2021 13:12

I offer the analogy of attempting, possibly half a century ago, to persuade an Apartheid supporting South African, or a Ku Klux Klan group in the Deep South, to believe that black and white skinned people were absolutely identically equal human beings.

So...what are the most empowering and equal of entertainments? What about having clubs for white customers to drink and gamble on the outcome of savage fights between the exhibited black men, encouraged to fight degradingly, maybe to serious injury, incentivised by the unusual ability to earn good money, because in the way the rest of their society is arrange, they have little or no equal opportunity to earn in the same way as whites?

Would that make those whites start to respect all black skinned people as equals, treat them well, pay them fairly, employ them on the same basis as their own friends and family? If not, what would?

Let white customers go to another club to drink and order naked black women do various sexual acts? No? Still not empowering or equalising, and still not making for a mixed-race society with equality of respect, opportunity and pay?

Certainly, the maimed black skinned survivors of the fight-to-the-death clubs would have adjusted their mind-sets to approve what was bringing them a good income, where nothing else would. So would the naked black skinned sex workers. They would not want the income stream stopped, any more than the club owners and white customers would. You would easily find them arguing that their work was somehow a good thing, since they all need to convince themselves of what they know to be a lie.

Gerla · 07/03/2021 13:16

It's not just about what happens directly outside the club though. There is plenty of evidence that the negative effects on women and girls are more widespread in the local area. You don't get to decide that just because a business makes money and employs women, nobody else counts. Btw I wasn't talking about Holbeck. There are plenty of places where police turn a blind eye to what is going on. Would you really like to live and bring up a family where men openly proposition girls in the street because the message is that is what women are for here? It enrages me that some women see feminist criticism of strip joints as condescending or even as a reaction to cheating husbands whereas the truth is a lot more than this. Yes, feminists see that a lot of women in these clubs are exploited but they are also criticizing the well-documented effects of these places beyond their walls. I would argue that it is extremely selfish not to consider what effect your work has on others just because you like it and it makes money.

ChattyLion · 07/03/2021 13:21

Gerla’s polluting factory analogy is excellent in my experience it’s a health and welfare risk to local inhabitants, the area is no longer cared for or policed properly and its not able to used and enjoyed by those who live there, as well as abusing the workers and making them unsafe at work and ultimately making a few people rich at a lot of other peoples’ expense.

MissBarbary · 07/03/2021 13:22

It's not just about what happens directly outside the club though. There is plenty of evidence that the negative effects on women and girls are more widespread in the local area

And on society in general. Women will never have full equality whilst the idea of buying sexual services from women is acceptable or, that weasel word "empowering"

And stripping is selling sexual services. It is not dance- no one goes to a strip club to admire the aesthetics and artistry of the "dancers".

peak2021 · 07/03/2021 13:25

@MissBarbary I don't agree with strip clubs regardless of who is taking their clothes off.

ChattyLion · 07/03/2021 13:30

I agree MissBarbary definitely it has national/global effects on women’s lives

CuntAmongstThePigeons · 07/03/2021 15:49

I guess we're just not going to agree. I want there to exist a world where women are not judged for pole dancing and clubs where people enjoy watching pole dancing are allowed.

I and the many other educated women who enjoy working in these clubs would love to have the opportunity to create happy, non exploitative, working environments.

If there is deemed to be a risk to women as a direct result of these clubs opening then that's obviously not on. I've never worked at a club in a residential area, so I can't comment on that. The clubs I've worked at have been in busy city centres, next to bars and night clubs that are open till the same hours and who have (in my personal experience) far drunker, less respectful, loud and obnoxious clientele.

CuntAmongstThePigeons · 07/03/2021 15:55

And again Barbary I find it a bit much that you refuse to believe that anyone goes there for the dancing. Once more with the greatest respect unless you've spent as much time in them both as a dancer and a customer as I, I'm not sure how you can make such a statement.

Sweeping unsubstantiated statements don't bolster your argument. I think working in absolutes is silly. Much better to be accurate and realistic. But what do I know, I'm just a silly stripper whose been brainwashed into enjoying my own oppression.

MissBarbary · 07/03/2021 15:56

[quote peak2021]@MissBarbary I don't agree with strip clubs regardless of who is taking their clothes off.[/quote]
Well of course- so do I.

CuntAmongstThePigeons · 07/03/2021 16:01

Sorry one more thing, I'm obviously not saying that a world where women and girls are propositioned on the street is ok.

I guess what I'm saying is can we get to a place where we accept that women working in a strip club doesn't mean all other women not in the strip club are fair game.

We used to have horrible ideas as a society about many things women did and what that said about them. From what they wore to the circumstances they became pregnant in to a thousand others. Do you think it is impossible to get to a point where women can enjoy dancing safely in a club and that has no connection to sex work and sexual harassment? I think you think it is? I don't. I think we need to educate people, mainly men but that we could get there in the end!

MissBarbary · 07/03/2021 16:06

I find it a bit much that you refuse to believe that anyone goes there for the dancing

Sure they do, of course. No I don't believe it. Even the actual trained dancer in the article I posted was disparaging about the quality of the "dancing"

Oh and btw- cut out the invented insults. No one has called you a silly, brain- washed stripper. Basically I don't think you are stupid- you simply don't care in the slightest about the wider, societal implications of normalising the sale of bodies for sexual titillation.

I'd have more respect for your views if you had the honesty to admit you like taking money off gullible punters ( whom you probably wouldn't countenance with a bargepole unless they paid you) and giving them a hard on than peddling this codswallop about their being there for the appreciation of dance.

MissBarbary · 07/03/2021 16:12

@CuntAmongstThePigeons

Sorry one more thing, I'm obviously not saying that a world where women and girls are propositioned on the street is ok.

I guess what I'm saying is can we get to a place where we accept that women working in a strip club doesn't mean all other women not in the strip club are fair game.

We used to have horrible ideas as a society about many things women did and what that said about them. From what they wore to the circumstances they became pregnant in to a thousand others. Do you think it is impossible to get to a point where women can enjoy dancing safely in a club and that has no connection to sex work and sexual harassment? I think you think it is? I don't. I think we need to educate people, mainly men but that we could get there in the end!

No we can't get to that mythical world because the existence of strip clubs will always normalise the selling of sex.

How on earth do you think you separate stripping from selling sex? It's the whole damn point of it.

Oh and btw there are already 1000s of places women can enjoy dancing safely.

TheImber · 07/03/2021 16:12

@MissBarbary

I find it a bit much that you refuse to believe that anyone goes there for the dancing

Sure they do, of course. No I don't believe it. Even the actual trained dancer in the article I posted was disparaging about the quality of the "dancing"

Oh and btw- cut out the invented insults. No one has called you a silly, brain- washed stripper. Basically I don't think you are stupid- you simply don't care in the slightest about the wider, societal implications of normalising the sale of bodies for sexual titillation.

I'd have more respect for your views if you had the honesty to admit you like taking money off gullible punters ( whom you probably wouldn't countenance with a bargepole unless they paid you) and giving them a hard on than peddling this codswallop about their being there for the appreciation of dance.

I don't think you are a very nice person MissBarbary.

I can tell you now without any hesitation, every stripper I have ever met (and most of the 'punters' as well) have treated people with far more basic respect than you seem to be able to manage.

TheImber · 07/03/2021 16:16

I actually do think women need protecting. They need to be protected from judgy f*ers like you.

I'd rather live in a neighbourhood with a 100 sex shops than have to put up with obnoxious, holier than thou people who think their way of conceptualising the works is the only valid one and everyone else is wrong and deserves to be treated and talked to like shit for daring to have the 'wrong' opinion.

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